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LTAs to the Rescue

The IT training paradox: Faculty want training, but they don’t have
time to spare. Low-threshold activities and applications are the answer.

Outside, the snow is falling and schools will be closed tomorrow. For my kids,
this is a welcome event; they’ll be ecstatic that classes are canceled.
Faculty or staff anticipating a development opportunity, on the other hand,
will be disappointed: They run short of time to attend training or other development
opportunities as it is, and the loss of a session that they had managed to fit
into their busy schedules will be a setback. And this highlights the very real
paradox that faculty and staff face when it comes to receiving training for
the use of technology, and training for effective pedagogical use of technology.
To illustrate the dilemma, below are a couple of questions we asked our own
faculty about time needed for training. How might your own faculty or staff
respond to them?

On our campus, the most common answer to the first question was “d.”
But responses to the second question were more likely to be “b.”
In other words, faculty need ample time to learn how to use the technologies,
but do not have nearly as much time to attend the training sessions as they
need. A couple more questions shed additional light on those needs:

3. How much technology should you be expected to learn, to utilize
a specific technology teaching tool?
a) The entire software application. b) Just enough to learn to use the teaching
tool, but no more. c) I don’t want to learn any technology; I expect the
technology to be transparent for me.

4. When learning to teach with a technology tool, which is most effective?
a) Learning the technology on your own. b) Taking a workshop where the technology
is taught, and then practicing it. c) Having one-on-one help in learning and
applying the technology. d) Other.

Our faculty answered question number three with “b” or “c.”
Responses to question number four were equally divided among “a”,
“b”, “c”, and “d”. What all of this indicates
is that faculty have a desire or need to learn technology to enhance teaching,
don’t have enough time, and want the process to be relatively simple.
This presents a quandary for faculty developers: How can they deliver effective
faculty training in a time-efficient manner? The TLT Group (www.tltgroup.org),
created to help educational institutions, associations, and corporations with
just such challenges, has devised an approach to circumvent this dilemma, or
at least reduce it. TLT president Steve Gilbert and his organization have been
espousing the merits of low threshold applications (or activities); LTAs, for
short. An LTA is a teaching/learning application of information technology.
It is defined as being reliable, accessible, easy to learn, non-intimidating,
and inexpensive.

Short and Sweet

An important characteristic of LTAs is that, typically, they are administered
in a low-threshold format: short, single-objective training sessions. Faculty
can invest a small amount of time to learn a single function or tool that they
can use to enhance teaching and learning. Sessions are often just 30 to 60 minutes
in length. The technology is fairly standard or ubiquitous and can be transferred
easily to others. Thus, a faculty member can devote a short amount of time to
attending a session in which he can learn something that can be used immediately
to support instruction or other aspects of the job.

From a faculty development perspective, LTAs provide a relatively easy way
to deliver training, both technical and pedagogical, to faculty. One-hour sessions
can be fit in during lunch hours, as a weekly series, as breakout sessions in
an institute, or in numerous other formats. By their nature, LTAs are fairly
easy to prepare and deliver; they are high-activity applications or sessions
and have a clear objective and clear, expected outcome. They can be used to
incrementally build expertise in faculty. All in all, LTAs allow teaching and
learning centers or other faculty development offices to deliver accessible
technology training to busy faculty.

Many Ways to Offer LTAs

Portland State University (OR), for instance, has delivered
training through “30 Minute Techno-Bites,” short noon-time sessions
on topics such as creation of PDF files, scanning, burning CDs, and even developing
QuickTime movies. At Ferris State University (MI), weekly one-hour
sessions held in the evening cover such items as converting Microsoft Word or
PowerPoint files to HTML, basics of creating Macromedia Flash presentations,
or creating online digital “handouts.” Bucks Community College
(PA) provides an online LTA of the Week in the form of a step-by-step guide
in PDF format for faculty on their campus. Topics covered include inserting
clip art from the Internet, creating sequential data in Excel, disabling pop-up
ads, and inserting the campus logo into e-mail signature files.

“LTAs provide a relatively easy way to deliver training both technical and pedagogical,
to faculty."

On our campus at Southeast Missouri State University, “Wired
Wednesdays” held during our campus common hour provide one-hour sessions
on various strategies to enhance teaching and learning with technology. Topics
include simple functions in our course management system, such as using scoring
rubrics in online discussions, electronic grade reporting, using the course
drop-box, and other topics such as best practices in teaching online and course
Web site organization. Steven Bell, director of the Paul J. Gutman Library at
Philadelphia University, promotes LTAs as mechanisms for getting
library resources and functions into the hands of faculty. Library LTA topics
include using table-of-contents alert services in eJournal collections; capturing
database articles as text files and uploading captured files into courseware
or eReserves; locating articles in databases using exact citations; supplementing
the addition of articles to course sites or eReserves; and using direct-borrow
options in systems such as FirstSearch from Online Computer Learning Center
(
www.oclc.org/firstsearch).

The list of LTAs on the LTA of the Week Web site includes a variety of strategies
for improving teaching and learning, but also includes time-saving and efficiency-
oriented activities. Some of the productivity-related LTAs that we have selected
as useful for our own faculty at Southeast include an e-mail merge with Microsoft
Word and Outlook, grading templates for Excel, time on task, and creating Web-
and print-friendly graphics in Microsoft PowerPoint. Rather than list and describe
all the offerings here, I encourage you to poke around the LTA of the Week Web
site, for additional examples of LTAs.

In the End

Because faculty have little time to attend training and need it to be delivered
in simple, incremental pieces, LTAs have provided an important new approach
to faculty development. Many campuses are using them as one approach, often
mixing them in with other traditional methods of delivery such as workshops,
institutes, online manuals, and so forth. At Southeast Missouri State, we have
found LTAs to be a useful supplement to our faculty development activities.
If the “time for training” paradox exists on your campus, too, it’s
time to check out LTAs.